The present invention pertains to earth moving equipment. More particularly, the present invention relates to the use of an articulated arm mounted on a vehicle for moving earth.
The invention finds particular application in cleaning and maintaining shoulders of roads or berms underneath and behind a guardrail and will be described with reference thereto. However, it should be appreciated that the invention also finds application in other equipment for digging, trenching or otherwise cutting or moving soil.
The buildup of debris on a berm under a guardrail and behind the guardrail is disadvantageous in that such buildup will cause water to stay on the road instead of being allowed to flow away from the road onto the shoulders of the road. This will lead to a washout of the road in heavy rains, which should be avoided if possible. While it is possible to clean the berm of a road on the road-side of a guardrail, it is difficult to clean the berm underneath and in back of the guardrail. In this regard, cleaning machinery often cannot be positioned on the berm behind the guardrail because frequently the berm slopes away from the road very quickly. Thus, one could have a 60.degree. to 75.degree. slope away from the road within 2 to 3 feet of the guardrail. Quite simply, the slope is too steep to allow the positioning of some sort of grading or sloping machine in that location. Whatever machine is utilized for such sloping purposes needs to be located on the road side of the guardrail.
Since the posts holding the guardrails are spaced apart by approximately 5 feet, which is the Federal Bureau of Roads standard for such post spacing, the blade of whatever cleaning equipment is utilized for cleaning underneath and behind the guardrails will need to be able to fit between each two posts to perform its cleaning function. In other words, the blades cannot be wider than 5 feet and should be preferably narrower in order that a more narrow spacing of the posts will not prevent a successful removal of debris from underneath the guardrail.
Various types of roadside maintenance equipment are known. It is known that articulated boom assemblies are particularly advantageous for supporting mowing apparatus on tractors. Such boom assemblies include a plurality of arms, a first of which is pivotally connected with a tractor and a second of which is pivotally connected between the mowing apparatus and the first arm. Hydraulic cylinders are provided to control the angular orientation of the first arm relative to the tractor and the second arm relative to the first arm. This enables the boom assembly to reach over guardrails and other structures to position the mowing apparatus. Another hydraulic cylinder can control the angular orientation of the mowing apparatus with regard to the second boom arm.
It is also known that an arm assembly extending from a tractor over any intermediate guardrails or the like can be utilized to position a ditching head along the low point of a drainage ditch in order to clean or trench the ditch.
However, at present, the only way of cleaning debris out from underneath a guardrail and moving it behind the guardrail has been through the use of a blade which is attached to the side of a tractor and is pushed out away from the tractor by a hydraulic cylinder or the like. This blade is, however, incapable of pivoting up and down as necessary in order to follow the contour of the shoulder and correctly slope the earth in back of the guardrail.
Thus, one of the problems with the conventional sloper assemblies is that the blades thereof cannot pivot enough in order to enable them to correctly slope or grade the embankment behind the guardrail. Another problem with such blades is that since they are transversely mounted to the vehicle, they can only be used directly to the side of the vehicle and do not have the capability of being moved as necessary away from a position directly normal to the longitudinal axis of the tractor.
Accordingly, it has been considered desirable to develop a new and improved sloper apparatus which would overcome the foregoing difficulties and others while providing better and more advantageous overall results.